Monthly Archives: March 2023

#1008: Radiohead – Palo Alto

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Well, would you look at that. It’s Radiohead, again. But for anyone out there who still couldn’t get their heads around why the band decided to make that drastic change in sound 23 years ago, today’s track should take you back to what I suppose you would label as the better times. ‘Palo Alto’ was initially released as a B-side on the ‘No Surprises’ single in the first few weeks of 1998. Sandwiched between the title track and fellow B-side ‘How I Made My Millions’, ‘Palo Alto’ works as the energetic pick-me-up to lighten the mood somewhat between the two sobering numbers. Though if you weren’t around at that time or simply too young to understand what was even going on, you’ll recognise it as being one of the numbers on the second disc of the OK Computer OKNOTOK reissue from 2017.

I came across it many years back through watching the Meeting People Is Easy documentary on YouTube. If you want to see a group of people feeling tired, irritable and jaded while promoting an album, that video is the one for you. There’s a section in there that showing Thom Yorke working on and generally vibing to ‘Palo Alto’ on a tour bus, but the full track plays over a montage of sped-up/reversed/slowed down footage of people on escalators and the band walking through Japan. It looks much better than how I’ve described, so I’d recommend you watch it. I’ll go ahead and embed that below, it’s the closest to an official music video you can get for it.

So as I alluded to earlier, this is the fat rocking number on the ‘No Surprises’ single to make the alleviate the sombre mood of the two other tracks. All’s quiet during the verses where Thom Yorke disconnectedly sings about living in the ‘city of the future’ where ‘everybody’s happy/made for life’, but then you get smacked in the face by a slamming wall of blasting guitars for the choruses. It’s a big freak out/cathartic moment for any of those people who have to get those twitchy moments out of their system. The track continues the ‘technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be’ and personal detachment themes that OK Computer is known for and was actually lined up to be the album’s title track for a while until it underwent the name change. Unlike the tracks that made it on the final record, ‘Palo…’ is a little more on-the-nose with the subject, which is probably the only reason I could think of why it didn’t make it on there. But anyhow, it carries on the large legacy of great B-sides that Radiohead possess in their discography.

#1007: Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

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It’s P time. Everytime I start a new section of this, I’m always weary of the amount of typing that I’ve gotta go through. But it has to be done. I’ve had this voice in my head telling me to have this done by the time I’m 30. That gives me just over two years. Maybe that’s pushing it. There’s still so many songs to go. But it’s worth a try. So let’s get restarted.

‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ is the opening track on Radiohead’s 2001 Amnesiac album, the second in the group’s iconic – for lack of a better word – left-turn experimental phase after Kid A preceded it a few months before. I want to say that it acted as a bit of a message on part of the band that if people who thought Kid A was strange, then they had no idea. No better way to start of an album with looping metallic chimes and electronic bleep-bloops to keep rock fans on their side. As I’ve come to know it though, that wait for some sort of melody or settled rhythm to kick in is well worth it once those (keys? synths?) come in at 36 seconds.

I’ll always remember where I was when I ‘listened’ to Amnesiac for the first time. ‘Listened’ being in quotation marks because I was asleep for the majority of it. It was a tiring day after A-Level preparation in year 13 days, I think I may have been feeling down at that point too, and Spotify had this free trial offer going on. Though I more or less missed the middle part of the record, I remember still being sort of awake during ‘Packt…’ and digging Thom Yorke’s pitch-corrected vocals and the overall glitchy vibe of the entire thing. Then my consciousness faded away gradually, but then suddenly perked up when ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ started. As a result, those two tracks were the ones from the album that I considered its highlights for some time. I’ve come to appreciate a couple more songs from it, but the record isn’t up there in my personal Radiohead album ranking, to be frank. Doesn’t have that good a flow, I feel.

But, ah, the song. What is ‘Packt…’ about? Well, if you’ve been a longtime reader here, you may have come across a few posts where I’ve flat out stated that I’m not much of a lyrics guy. Even when it comes to writing these, I usually see what other people have said and see whether I agree with it or not. In rare cases, there are some tracks where I’ve felt I got the meaning down, which makes sense to me. This isn’t one of those times. Knowing that during the making of Kid A/Amnesiac, Thom Yorke utilised a method of cutting up lyrics and randomly linking them together, there’s a good chance that there isn’t a truly deep meaning to pick up from these sets of lyrics at all. They do sound great together, though, which to me is really all that matters. Oh, actually the main message is Thom Yorke wants some peace – leave him alone. There we go.